This has been an interesting month for sure. I honestly expected my income to drop a bit, since I didn’t keep up with my publishing schedule, and I tested out some obscure types of content that I didn’t expect to perform. I’ve also felt fairly stressed lately, and haven’t been feeling the best either. This is making it hard to focus and do creative work, and I often struggle to find inspiration throughout the day because I’m a little too focused on why I’ve been feeling like shit. A little brain fog, anxiety (probably warranted, knowing in the back of my mind what I’d like to accomplish and switch gears career wise), and slacking on my health (diet, comfort eating, not working out as much as I should, no walks, etc…)

I’ve been feeling a little “tapped” as well, so I began wondering if I was drinking too much coffee again. (this happened a year or two ago as well, and I didn’t realize it until it was a problem!) Thinking with the stress I’ve been feeling, I started wondering if maybe my adrenals were over worked, so I started juicing again (70-75 ounces of juice daily), quit coffee cold turkey, and have been getting up early for morning meditative walks. I use this time to think about what I’m going to write about that day, or to just daydream about my vision for this blog, and very often when doing so, I get great ideas. I also tried some EFT techniques I found on youtube that were surprisingly effective. It seems a little too woo-woo for me (my BS meter was going off like a mofo for some of them, but I did it anyway), but after learning about the science behind re-balancing the energy in your body, it’s very similar to what happens in acupuncture. (which I like, a lot!)

Let’s get to the good part already!

Clever Blog Income Report #6 – My 6th Month Blogging

Affiliate Income:

Affiliate Income Streams

Ebay: $143.69

Passive Income Streams

Total Income For August 2016: $1,008.48

Metrics That Matter

Most people look at traffic and analytics stats at this point, but it’s still trickles of traffic from all over the place. When a site is young, and you haven’t done any link building, there are really only a handful of metrics that matter if you’re doing content marketing. Primarily the age of the site, user intent of the keywords you’re targeting, and number of posts/total word count published.

Site Age

My site is still new, so there’s a ton of bouncing going on for all my content. Meaning, one week a certain section or articles are doing well, and another they seem to do very poorly. I would imagine if I increased my sites trust by reaching out to friends and doing more on social, I could improve this drastically. But I feel there is more work to be done under the hood to create the foundation of my message… Since that is still relatively unclear at this point in time to first time visitors.

Keyword Selection

This has been HUGE!. Some informational posts that I though would kill it, have simply done nothing. Other posts that I through up just to test things (that are product/commercial/buyer intent focused) have done surprisingly well. I’ve noticed that taking time to hone in on what the user/reader is truly looking for and might be feeling, makes a big difference in the stile of content I can produce. Not to mention, a lot of the things I want to blog about, aren’t necessarily the winners.

Total Words Published

This is fairly self explanatory, but essentially the more irons in the fire, the better the results. I see a direct correlation to my income rising compared to total words published. Those that say blogging is dead, well, I would have to disagree.

In my mind, this is one area I have been slacking in as well. There’s no reason why I can’t pump out 3k words per day. And it’s a known fact that quality loves quantity… meaning, you have to get frequent at something before you can get good usually. (I postponed going through this phase because I wanted everything to be perfect and match my vision… only trouble is, I never got anything up! Resorting to “testing” alternative stuff got me through it.)

What’s Working

Income Wise

I’m starting to earn more money on content I wrote MONTHS ago still. New posts are starting to get traction (old posts to me… I forgot I even wrote some of them!), and it’s clear my confident marination period is approaching full swing. The best thing that’s worked for me patience wise, is just forgetting about everything and staying focused on getting new things out the door. Testing, writing, finding inspiration wherever I can, and not being too rigid with myself. (everyone and their mother says you can’t combine topics, can’t do this, should only blog about this… I finally said fuck it, I’m going to do whatever I want, and I’ve found that my inspiration is much easier to maintain.)

I also saw some Ebay income kick in from a few things I tested many months ago as well… which was a nice little unexpected bonus! Makes me want to do more of those tests, and maybe even do a couple affiliate ecommerce stores in the near future like I used to build in mass.

Wiring & Creativity

Still struggling here. I think if I get a handle on what I’ve been calling brain fog (just generally feeling less mentally capable lately, making it hard to get creative), this will fix itself. Pretty much overlap for the health section below, but funnily enough, getting back to my walking, juicing, and supplement routine is helping in this department tremendously.

Tools

No new tools this month, and I’m still using the same ones that have been helping me make more money as the past few months:

Health

This is a new section I added this month. I’ve been noticing a pretty big difference in my ability to work on my blog, be more creative, and have more effortless discipline, the more and more I focus on taking better care of myself. There are a TON of things I’ve tried in this arena over the last year or so that I think would be very helpful for some people, so I’m thinking I’ll narrow down the ones that have had the biggest impact, and start sharing them as well.

Most notably so far, are the changes and experiments with the big 3: Diet, Exercise, and Sleep. I’ve tried an absolute shit ton of sleeping products and supplements, and have also experimented with a lot of different diet styles and food supplements.

There’s another component thrown in to the mix most people commonly refer to as meditation, but I personally have a hard time doing traditional standalone breathing meditations consistently. What I have found to work well for me however, is meditative walks, binaural beats, and various forms of relaxation music and rituals.

For me, the main thing has been to focus on carving a small amount of time out of each day, to simply relax and focus on the moment. Lately practicing gratitude has been coming up quite a bit, so I believe I need to incorporate that into the practice as well. Thus far, I find it VERY difficult to simply schedule time in the middle of the day to stop what I’m doing and be still and relax. Nonetheless, this seems to be the most effective (and important) time do buckle down and just do it, though I frequently find myself wanting to keep working instead. (or coming up with excuses like… “I’ve gotta get XXXX project done for so and so by XX date… don’t have time for binaural nap, mediation, relaxation time”!) And then my mental performance goes down and everything suffers overall.

I have a plan next month to take myself out of my normal environment, go to Maine for the month, and establish new rituals in solitude. There’s something about being in a tiny cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere, when you need to do critical thinking and do your most creative work.

Side note – it also helps that there’s an Orgone Energy Wilhelm Reich Museum about an hour away to spark out of the box ideas! 😉 (somewhat nutty, but intriguing if he could really “make it rain” on command decades ago!)

What’s Not Working

In one word: stress.

It would be really nice to have a blueprint or something I could follow on days when I don’t feel like this is going to work out. I’ve bought a bunch of blogger products about a year ago when I was considering doing this, but none really resonate with exactly what I need. I’m trying to be positive about this, and try and find a way to see the good or opportunity in the current circumstances. I know from past experience, that very often if you as a person have struggled greatly with something, there are hundreds of thousands of other people out there that are, or will struggle, with the exact same thing. This could present an opportunity to create a product down the road to help people if I can become successful at it… essentially creating, what I WISH I had right now!

Secret:

I haven’t told any of my immediate friends or family (hopefully they don’t ever read this until much later 😉 ), but I took myself off salary completely 3 months ago. I want to document that here anyway, so I can look back on it and remember the time… Even though I’d prefer not to mention it currently.

This makes me very uncomfortable, but I had to make sure there is enough working capital left in my primary business account to maintain any existing contracts and accounts for the rest of the year (without any additional sales). The only way I could do that, was to stop all unnecessary expenses, including my own salary.

I’m starting to feel it now, as I transferred money from my savings last month for living expenses for the very first time. NOT A GOOD FEELING!!!! But I believe in putting myself in a position where I must succeed, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t scare the shit out of me. So, now I have a finite number of months (XX) of living expenses, and I’m also starting to deplete my reserve fund which I hate. (I also chose to put some things on credit instead of paying cash, which may or may not turn out to be a stupid move. Either way, I wanted to buy myself some time to generate income)

My Biggest Struggles In My 6th Month Blogging

More of the same. I’ll write about this more next month, but mostly belief, consistency, and focus.

Even though I KNOW it’s possible to create a lifestyle business or “blog business”, so that I can make a full time income from anywhere in the world, it’s still hard to conceive and move forward on some days when surrounded by negativity. Sometimes just one small comment by someone can affect what you believe you can achieve in a negative way. When shit gets real, you need all the help you can get on your side… and some of that means removing influences (media, especially TV… NO FUCKING TELEVISION AT ALL!!!, and even people)This is one of the reasons I think I need to go into seclusion to I can create exactly what I need, with zero outside influences.

Consistency and focus is still a struggle, and I frequently get the shiny object syndrome, or the “i wanna do a million projects” syndrome. Ain’t gonna cut it bud. But I’ll tell you what’ll get my ass in gear… transferring more money from that savings account pal!!! Yikes.

Featured Tutorials Of The Month

None.

Featured Question Of The Month

None.

What’s Next?

I’m excited about a new case study idea I came up with. Just like I review everything I buy and earn extra money on those purchases if the products are any good, well there’s no reason why I can’t do the same thing and pay for my toys. So I decided to buy a new four wheeler, and turn it into a case study. Pretty excited to see how this turns out!

I bought a Sportsman 570 that I pick up Saturday in New Hampshire. The idea is that I’ll end up getting it for “free” by creating a tiny little asset, that’s centered around the topic as an enthusiast. It’ll generate more than enough income to pay for the bike and insurance, and probably a few accessories as well. Not to mention potentially opening the opportunity to make partnerships with aftermarket companies for future projects like this as well, which would be super cool. Most of the initial work will be fun, and mentally it’s already done.

My content strategy is to create the best and most helpful resource on Sportsman 570’s on the planet. As a buyer myself, I already know all the pitfalls, questions, and potential issues one might run into, now all I have to do is build out the site, and film for the youtube channel.

I also want to get back into creating my tutorials, and adding a lot more depth to these income reports. I want them to become more of a resource than just an income report, but I need to start detailing how I’m making money with each income source with separate posts/guides that I link to… To avoid cluttering up every single one. If there’s anything specific you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments below… It helps a lot to have an idea what the sticking points are, or what types of information in the guides you’d like to see/would be most helpful.

That’s all for now… Looking forward to see what next month brings!

How can I make these income reports more helpful / useful for you? Comment below and let me know!

About Author

Join the conversation on Matt's case studies at CleverLeverage.com as he discovers and tests new ways to earn more income, learn alternative investment strategies to net >10%, maintain good health, and turn passions into online businesses.